Posterboard Picture Frame Mattings

I have recently started a photo frame collage for our living room. I already had a small one...but some of them got ruined when I tried to spray paint them white...

So I bought a few new (to me) frames and wanted them to all have the same color mattes. Some of the frames were weird sizes that I knew I wouldn't find in stores...so I decided to make my own.

Originally I was going to use cardstock...but it wasn't on sale at the craft store and I wanted something a little thicker. That is where the posterboard comes in:) It is thicker and comes in a ton of colors! Plus the dollar store sells the standard colors for 50 cents. I just chose white since I want my pictures to be the main focus in my collage.

Materials:

posterboard

pen/pencil

ruler

scissors (I used a slicer that I got in the scrapbook section at the craft store)

1. Take the glass out of the frames and arrange them on the posterboard. If your frame doesn't have glass, then you can trace the back piece it comes with, or just measure the opening in the back.

2. Trace them with a pen or pencil.

3. Cut them out. I just used scissors for the outsides since they won't be seen in the frames.

4. Cut out the center pieces for your picture size. For some standard sizes I just traced an old matte I already had. For my special sized frames, I just measured and drew in the centers myself.

5. Cut out the centers with scissors (if you have a steady hand), or a handy paper cutter works great for clean lines and corners.

For now I like all the mattes being white...but I might change my mind later:) This would be great to do with scrabooking paper too:)

That was the easy part...now I need to arrange them, hang them, and fill them! I just threw them all on the floor to take this picture...but I actually kind of like the layout:)

Total price $.50